


of habits and belonging

by stellarisms



Series: it goes like this (the minor fall, the major lift)。 [7]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Companion Piece, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Missing Scene, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7720585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarisms/pseuds/stellarisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happens, Erwin thinks it’s a legitimate mistake.  </p><p>(It's not, but Levi wanted him to notice, anyway.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	of habits and belonging

**Author's Note:**

> Another little story (technically) within the IGLT universe that works as a standalone piece ^^;

 

The first time it happens, Erwin thinks it’s a legitimate mistake.

Since Levi took up sharing living space with Erwin, they’ve established a system.  A natural, equitable system. 

A system that’s worked for years.

For breakfast: whoever gets up and leaves the quarters for the main base earliest. 

For dinner: whoever didn’t make breakfast. 

For dishes and miscellaneous cleanup: whoever finishes their meal last. 

For laundry: Levi. 

It’s always Levi.

 

* * *

 

 

But Erwin’s knows Levi better than this. 

Levi is fastidious, a deliberate sort, even more so than Erwin’s ever been, his insistence on keeping things organized no less defining than his affinity for dust-free bedroom corners. 

Levi himself is care, caustic cautiousness personified.

So he’s a bit surprised when he wakes from sleep later than usual Thursday morning and finds his suit jacket – along with Levi – nowhere to be found.

Did something happen, Erwin wonders, or had it been misplaced with yesterday’s wash?

He spends the rest of the afternoon into evening holed up in his office, reflecting on that idle thought, spare jacket hanging from the back of his office chair. 

It keeps his mind at bay from everything else, from the usual business that keeps him busy on expedition-less weeks with capital meetings scheduled. 

All bureaucratic business, of course. 

They’re leftovers, scraps of important and non-important information to be examined from resigned and relieved commanders of years long past. 

And, naturally, taking on necessary evils in the realm of time sacrificed is Erwin’s specialty.

So Erwin’s pen only halts in its furious scrawling thrice throughout the day.

When Jaeger peers into his office and, an unbridled energy and an unsure furrow to his eager grin, asks if the Commander happened to have seen Squad Leader Hange anywhere, Erwin smiles and answers that he hasn’t seen her all day.

(He’s almost positive that Hange mentioned a marketplace of some sort and that Moblit would serve as faithful accompaniment, but– well, he trusts Hange enough to allow her a day off every once in awhile. 

She deserves it, after all, working as hard as she does and with such tenacity for a better world as she does. 

They all do.)

Twice, when Renz peeks around the doorframe and, a courtesy and grace even to her fussing, offers to pour the Commander some tea courtesy of Squad Leader Nanaba and Squad Leader Mike, Erwin smiles and answers that he would appreciate it.

(He’s almost certain the latter was the one who made the tea, not former, because black tea softened with honey and sharpened with clove– that’s a Mike specialty, as he knows Erwin’s tastes all too well.

Though Renz does, too, beaming as she places down another tea cup beside the one already on his tray.

Levi’s cup at that.)

So when Levi slips into his office forty minutes following the end of the scouts’ weekly 3DMG drills, Erwin’s long reheated the tea and reached the bottom of his paper pile (at long last) and does little more than offer a soft peal of _welcome back_ to Levi following the swift, near-soundless echoes of his return.

“Hey,” Levi halfhearted retort drifts above his bowed head; training must have been difficult today.  “You still owe me dinner for last week, old man.  Time to pay up." 

"Ah,” the older man says, mildly.  Indeed he does.  “Is it now?”

Erwin’s mistake is that when he looks up, he doesn’t notice the trailing length of the coattails right away.

He’s not far away enough to mistake it for anything else, either.

“Levi."  There’s a certain cadence, Erwin finds, that emerges when he speaks to his once-reluctant roommate; Levi elicits otherwise stifled sentiments within him.  Curiosity.  Chagrin.  Confusion.  "Is that…my jacket you’re wearing?”  

He’s not far enough to mistake what flickers across Levi’s face then, either.

How Levi looks, at the initial pause, surprised.

If Erwin didn’t know any better, he would think Levi _was_ surprised.

By him.

“Sure as hell isn’t my size."  And if Erwin knew any better – hadn’t been the sort who notices minute details, hadn’t noticed the clench of a sharp jawline or the too-large fabric that almost swallows his wrists and the dangling sleeves at his side or how **small** he looks, bundled from the bitter autumn’s chill pending its unwelcome arrival – he wouldn’t let this surprise him.  "So you tell me.”

He’s surprised, as always, by the fondness that he should repress, repress, _repress_ , lest the faint longing for touch he almost relents to will never leave.

Surprised, as always, that unflinching gaze, that Levifollows him from the slow rise of his stiff form to the stroll around the desk to meet him halfway.

He’s surprised, as always, when they both pull away when Erwin’s hand closes over Levi’s palm reaching for the door handle and yet it’s Erwin who’s _startled_ , if not embarrassed, and the lost words he intends to say  send their regards.

As always.

“I can tell,” Erwin recalls, sometime after they’ve started down the hall to their quarters, that he has a working voice, “it looks like a comfortable fit for you."  Then, almost rueful.  "Unless that’s not why you took my jacket this morning.”

Levi always, always catches him by surprise. 

Always.

He’s even easier caught up in the moment – in empty corridors moonlit and delicate, in the quick turn on his heel that brings Levi’s gaze to as him again, in the telltale twining of their fingertips, in the hard tug at his uniform and the gentle glide of Levi’s mouth ghosting over his – and Erwin finds there’s a lesson to be learned in these purposeful mistakes. 

“It does what it needs to."  No matter how small Levi seems, Erwin is always taken aback by how strong and sure his captain’s presence is, he’s learned to stay quiet about the smug little curve he feels on his lips moving against his.  "But I can’t take what’s already mine.”

 

* * *

 

 

(When Jaeger shuffles from his end of the room, broom sweeping the last of the floorboards as he goes, and wonders aloud with the utmost ingenuousness _is_ _that jacket really yours, Captain, because it looks awfully big–_ it’s all Erwin can do not to make the worst possible **noise** as he leaves his office for the capital and alert an already scowling Levi on the other side of the wall to what they both already know well.)

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, he even falls asleep like that.

Erwin returns to find him, as expected, right where Levi is naught to be on nights like these. 

Curled on his side. 

Legs and knees tucked under.  

Pillows scattered a scant distance away from him, long forgotten and tossed aside.

Yet even in his usual fitful slumber, Levi still hasn’t let go of his jacket.

Briefly, Erwin does give in to the urge to laugh. 

Soft, so as not to rouse the other man from sleep. 

Soft, so as not to linger on how easy and unguarded the slight curl of Levi’s parted lips look for too long. 

Soft, so as not to forestall what he intends to do now that he’s finally back to the safe refuge of his private quarters.

It takes quite a bit of shifting and quite a bit of ingenuity before he can remove the jacket and move Levi over enough on the mattress to make room for him. 

But he does it.

He does whatever it takes to lie at rest beside him.

He does whatever it takes to reassure Levi, even like this, _especially_ like this, of the power another person’s warmth can provide in the tired and troubled times they live in.

 

* * *

 

(And if Levi should unconsciously wriggle into his arms and build a wary nest ever so surely into the broad expanse of his chest, burrow himself centimeter by painstaking centimeter against the commander until their seamless shadows merge into one beneath the coverlets, then Erwin never mentions it at morning’s light and, instead, holds Levi that much closer – as close as he dares, to be as bold in his as he’s become in offering his heart to Levi in turn.)

 


End file.
